In certain industries including the fine paper industry, shipping pallets or skids having parallel stringers or runners with very small notches or other openings (e.g. about 2.5 inches in width and about 1.5 inches in height) are employed. Such notches or other openings may be widely spaced (e.g. by several feet) in the stringers or runners of such a pallet or skid.
Herein, the terms "pallet" and "skid" are used interchangeably to refer to a load-supporting platform with parallel runners including two outer runners and with an upper decking structure, whether or not the load-supporting platform also has a lower decking structure. Herein, moreover, the terms "stringer" and "runner" are used interchangeably.
In a machine for strapping such a skid, together with a load supported by the skid, steel or polymeric straps are fed around the skid and the supported load, tensioned, and sealed. Such straps may be thus applied in orthogonal planes, respectively as girth straps and as cross straps. It is known for such a machine to comprise a feeding conveyor for feeding a skid and the supported load through a feeding zone, into a strapping zone, in which the straps are applied.
In such a machine, it is known to use one or more strap guides of a type comprising an elongate channel, which is supported from a proximal end as a cantilever. As directed via an automated mechanism or manually through aligned openings or notches in the runners of the skid, each strap guide guides a steel or polymeric strap through such openings or openings when the strap is fed and releases the strap when the strap is tensioned.
An improved strap guide of the type noted above is disclosed in the copending Tipton et al. application referenced above. The improved strap guide has a channel having a distal end, at which the strap guide enters aligned openings in the skid runners, and includes means for counteracting tendencies of its distal end to be downwardly deflected by gravity.
Before the improved strap guide noted above became available, it was not feasible to provide an automatic machine for strapping a skid and a supported load, if the skid runners had very small openings (e.g. about 2.5 inches in width and about 1.5 inches in height) to admit a strap guide.